Queenling

by Mare Macabre

Vent

Celestia emerged from a tall, ebony black spire into inky darkness and blistering cold. The glow of her white hot body illuminated the muted red landscape, rust colored sand vitrifying beneath her feet as she strode out into the night. The endless red plain stretched out beyond her growing gleam and the point when black land met empty space on the horizon was totally obscured.

Celestia marched, stomping her metal clad feet into the sizzling sand, nearly a mile from the obsidian obelisk that stretched out into space before finally stopping. She opened her tightly clenched eyes, taking in the dark red sand beneath her hooves, and felt another wave of heat rippling out of her body as she finally let her emotions go. Magic burst through her mental barriers, flooding her brightly shining horn, and the solar monarch felt something powerful building in the depths of her chest. She adjusted her stance, taking a deep breath of aether, and released her grip on anything that remained of her self-control.

---

Princess Luna trotted briskly through the dark halls of Canterlot Castle, doing her best to maintain the appearance of normalcy as she chased down her sister. Even if she didn’t already know where the princess of sunlight was going, her trail became progressively easy to follow as she neared her destination. Luna glanced around, ensuring nopony was near, and cast silent spells to erase the scorch marks from the polished marble and unsinge the grandiose rugs that trailed through the halls toward the matriarch’s private chambers.

Within minutes she arrived at the towering door to the room, and found it suspiciously devoid of its usual regiment of guards. More strangely, the door was slightly ajar and drifting inward as though it had just bounced back from being unsuccessfully slammed shut. Luna wondered at how she had managed to miss the no doubt deafening boom of the colossal doors colliding before remembering their soundproofing enchantments and cautiously approaching them.

“Sister?” she called, pushing lightly at the opening door.

The room within was far from empty, but it was devoid of anything resembling an angry alicorn princess. Luna bit her lip as she took in the badly burned tiles at the entrance of the room, then winced as she stepped in and looked back at the blackened inner faces of the doors. She stepped in further and shut the door, looking around the room for some sign of her sister.

“Sister?” she called again, leaning to look out at the balcony. “’Tia?”

Luna turned back into the room. Then she frowned, and turned back to the balcony. She narrowed her eyes and stepped out into the night, focusing her powerful telescopic eyesight on a light on the horizon.

A planet—Mars, she realized—had somehow developed a corona.

Luna blinked her eyes back into focus and turned from the balcony, cantering over to a full-length mirror set into the wall near her sister’s bed. She glanced at a dial set centered above the pane, pursing her lips as she saw it was set exactly as she expected, then took a deep breath. The lunar princess approached the looking glass, stopping for a moment to cast a tinting spell over her pupils as a last minute thought, then steeled herself and stepped through the pane.

Even with her darkened lenses the light was blinding. That, coupled with the crashing waves of sweltering heat, left the blue alicorn completely disoriented as she emerged from the obelisk at the other end of the mirror. Luna dug her hooves into the melting sand and trudged forward against the wall of heat and force toward the heart of the firestorm. Sunfire filled her lungs as she instinctively inhaled, forgetting the lack of atmosphere, and she collapsed into the molten ground as she violently coughed out the thick smoke of her smoldering lungs. The princess struggled to regain her footing in the liquid glass then began her march anew, careful to avoid breathing in any more of the inferno.

Even after strengthening the tint over her eyes, twice, Luna found it difficult to look directly at her sister. Her body was engulfed in blazing light, roiling plasma erupting from her hunched form like a supernova. The princess of night shaded her eyes against the shine of her fellow alicorn and tried to pick details out of the mass of light. She was fairly certain her wings were spread high above her head, but that was all she could tell even from a short distance. Rather than get closer, Luna began to dig and climb her way around the ball of starfire to see what she could.

Here, at the heart of the tempest, molten glass and liquid rock flowed like water. Luna found herself nearly swimming as she circled around her blindingly luminescent sister. One, two, three more times she strengthened the light blocking spell set over her eyes, and finally the shape of Celestia became distinct within the bloom.

Celestia stood knee deep in boiling slag, her head bowed and eyes clenched shut as she screamed an endless, silent howl into the airless void. Her body was wracked with tremors as scorching light, searing heat, and burning rage blasted out of her in cosmic waves, warping the planet around her as they went. A fresh burst of emotion and magic sent towering waves rippling out through the sea of glass, momentarily knocking her younger sibling below the surface. Luna breached with silent sputtering and jerking, her hooves working quickly to brush the beads of liquid stone from her mane and horn, then waded her way to the soundlessly screaming princess of sunlight.

“. . .” she called, forgetting once again the lack of oxygen. She floated and waded her way to her elder’s side, fighting her screaming instincts to reach out and place a hoof on her sister’s shoulder.

The cold of enchanted metal opened Celestia’s eyes with a start. Her head snapped sideways, once again finding her younger sister standing beside her with a face full of concern. The blistering hot alicorn shut her mouth and lifted her head, eyes facing forward in embarrassment and mild anxiety. She shifted uncomfortably as her shrinking pupils adjusted to the light and the Martian hellscape came into focus. She cleared her throat, an action that would have been lost were it not for the hoof rising to her chest, and looked again at her sister.

“The night is my time, sister. We do not need two suns,” Luna mouthed with a faint smile.

Celestia sighed—or tried to, finding her lungs long since empty—and returned the small grin. “I’m sorry.”

The blue alicorn raised her sister’s chin to bring her eyes back to her. “Let us return home. This heat is uncomfortable.”

Celestia nodded silently, her face growing red as she turned and surveyed more of the glowing hot lake that she had created. With a flicker of magic from her horn the princess extracted herself from the lava pool and stood atop it, her powerfully enchanted horseshoes carrying her lightly over its surface.

Luna, after silently muttering a few angry words to herself at forgetting that such a thing were possible, followed suit.

---

The Cosmic Glass expunged hot slag, as well as a majority of the heat, from the two alicorns as they passed back through to their own sphere. Despite its efforts, Celestia still glowed a brilliant white as she stepped into the dark of her bedchambers, the corner of her ornamental rug igniting the instant she grew close. With a reversion spell and a miniature raincloud conjuration the fire was quelled and her body was quenched, a thick sputtering hiss filling the room as rain evaporated against Celestia’s burning body.

The heat dealt with, and the smoke swept from the room, the two princesses finally took a moment to fill their lungs with air and allow them to speak.

“I’m sorry,” Celestia murmured. “That was. . . truly horrible of me.”

“Everyone has their mechanisms, sister,” Luna assured her with a comforting hoof. “Besides, you could have done that here. That would be one the worst ways to find out I was still not in the alpha timeline,” she mused quietly.

Celestia nodded an agreement, then shook her head. “No, I meant. . . the changeling. I can’t believe I just let go like that.”

“She provoked you,” Luna shrugged. “You showed great restraint, I thought.” Celestia closed her eyes and let out a very slow breath, one that worried her sister. “She did provoke you, yes? What did she say?”

The elder princess’ eyes clenched and her wings flared as the memory repeated itself. “She. . . she played my lack of knowledge about changelings against me. Then she questioned—outright dismissed, actually—my abilities as a leader; she threw my refusal to execute Discord back at me, she—“

“How did she ‘throw your refusal’ at you?” Luna queried, tipping her head to one side. “Discord has proven to be an invaluable asset for Twilight Sparkle’s development as a princess. You were right to refute my orders to destroy him in his petrified state.”

“Well we never knew if that would actually kill him or free him,” Celestia shrugged dismissively. “I wanted to do it, but it was too risky.”

“Regardless,” Luna scowled, “your decision was the right one. With him as an ally we are infinitely more prepared to eliminate threats to Equestrian welfare.”

“Unless he goes rogue,” Celestia said flatly. “Unless he gives us false information about our enemies’ strength and tricks us into consolidating our powers to make them easier to steal. Chaos is unpredictability by definition, Luna. I am positive that his most recent ‘reformation’ was a mood swing, just like the last.”

Luna stared at her sister, dumbfounded. “Why do you not tell me these things? If we feel so similarly and so strongly how can we not act on these feelings?”

“If I acted on every feeling I have I would be thirty light-years from this damn planet drinking Vin Lunaire like water,” Celestia laughed a little manically. “We can’t act on our feelings, Luna. We don’t get to do that anymore. Our subjects need order. More than that, they need happy endings. If that entails letting someone pick and poke at our little sandcastle in paradise every now and again then we just have to grin and bear it, fixing it up as we can.”

Silence followed as Celestia watched with a somber grin as her sister reeled. After a moment Luna decided she needed to sit, and made her way to one of the armchairs near Celestia’s desk.

“Sometimes I forget just how much older than me you are,” she sighed, massaging her temples.

“I might be insulted if anyone else said that,” Celestia mused, sitting next to the blue alicorn. “Doubly so if it was that changeling.”

“Why did you get so mad at her,” Luna asked, looking up. “If you’re so far removed from ‘mortals and their petty egos,’ as you put it, what’s different here?”

Celestia turned a bemused look at her sister. “You know just as well as I do that’s horse apples. Possibly better.” Luna’s look turned sour and Celestia put a hoof to her forehead. “Sorry, I'm still grouchy. My point is that I’m not exempt from being annoyed, especially by some teenager that thinks she could do my job better than me.” she sighed, looking at the floor, “ More than that though, I think. . .”

Luna stopped massaging and lifted her head, noting the concern in her elder’s words and face. “Think...?”

Celestia glanced sideways at her. “You know better than anyone that I do not love lightly, nor do I hate on a whim. But,” she sighed again, chewing her lip, “Luna. . . I think. . . I think I might be. . .”

“Yes?” Luna probed, leaning closer.

Celestia turned a worried expression to her.

“I think I might be racist.”

Comments

[AutumnT]

Its okay. Everyone's a little bit racist. Just ask Avenue Q.